Definitely meet with an employment law attorney. You're position being eliminated vs your department being eliminated are completely different! The attorney can get your personnnel records and the documents to why you were laidoff vs a coworker.
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This is nuts people looking to hit attorneys and thinking of litigation
My God do you really think Humana is stupid ?
Waste your money. You think you got screwed in the layoff? Bend over for the attorney bills.
You will lose
Unfortunately, RIFs happen in every company. If you do your due diligence, when looking for a job, you know of Humana’s layoffs. If you’re in a right to work state… move on . If not….your attorney would get way more than you. PLUS, any new employer, wouldn’t employ you. Take that anger and move on
IMO the goal of getting an attorney involved is to force leaders to work out the RIF via redeployment. If there are open positions your area that match your skill level, the company isn't legally obligated to redeploy you, despite reportedly needing a business justification for the RIF per the workforce planning policy. But leaders may consider offering an open position as better alternative to the costs and bad image of fighting a lawsuit.
I got RIF'd at Humana 3 years ago while there were open positions in my department. I was going to fight it but then I applied for and was offered a position in another department prior to meeting with an attorney.
Fun fact: I recorded my official RIF meeting with HR. I asked if the company could legally RIF me with open positions and she said that "it wouldn't be fair" to forcibly redeploy someone...as though unemployment is a better alternative lol!
It confuses how many negative reactions there are to the truth of the situation….does that mean you don’t like the truth? Does it mean you disagree with the posts?
And even if you did make it through months and months and months of litigation, they’d agree to settle and you’d get a little money but not a lot. Probably what you would get in severance or less depending on your tenure
Call the ethics line, maybe If you have a valid, ethical concern about your situation, they can help
Humana goes through rigorous steps to follow the laws and their processes are overseen by a third party, Humana has lawyers, too…so, if you get an attorney, I hope you can foot the bill, because you won’t get your severance. And, if you live in a right to work state, you can be let go at any point for any reason. A lawsuit against Humana probably won’t work….after all the RIFs, over the past decade, where Humana has used the same procedure, has there ever been a successful sue of Humana for their practices? Of the thousands of people RIFd over the years, it’s not happened, and it won’t. I’m sorry to sound so harsh, but I wanted to be pretty direct in you not wasting your money on this, since I doubt any law will take a lawsuit based on a restructuring RIF on contingency. But, I’m not a lawyer. Perhaps you can set up a website and post it on here, if people are interested in following up with you on it, they can go there for info?
So…yes and no. You can hire a lawyer, and you should at least get a consultation if you think something illegal happened.
But realistically, the odds of getting to the stage discovery stage aren’t good. Plaintiffs don’t get to hire a lawyer and then go on a fishing expedition for documents. Employment law cases first require the plaintiff to file an EEOC complaint. That complaint has to pass certain tough judicial tests. If it doesn’t pass the tests, you don’t get to move to the discovery phase where you could request documents.
Most complaints die at the EEOC level. That’s because employment law is skewed to favor the employer, not the employee.
Should you get a lawyer to evaluate whether you have a viable case that could give a good monetary outcome? Sure. But are the odds in your favor? No. They’re skewed heavily in the employer’s favor.
Also something to think about: Severance. You have a limited time period after your employment has been terminated to sign the waiver and release. If you fail to sign it within that time period, you don’t get a do over. You’ll have forfeited severance.
Find a good lawyer who can advise you on your case’s chances. Do a second consultation with a different lawyer, if you’d like, and even a third.
But if the message you get is that the case isn’t worth pursuing, believe it.
I hope this helps.